Tea at Trianon: Britain’s Grooming Gangs

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, February 27, 2023

Britain’s Grooming Gangs

From The Spectator:

Stead was most of all famous for the first great newspaper investigation, in 1885, ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’, on the scandal of child prostitution. Stead had bought a girl called Eliza for £5, on the premise that she was to be taken to a brothel on the continent, using quite dubious methods that got him sent to jail for three months.

Despite this, the story succeeded – a national scandal which led to a change in the law, the age of consent raised from 13 to 16. The idea of English girls being trafficked into sex outraged and horrified the public, Stead’s story imprinted itself deeply into the public psyche, to the extent of influencing George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion — thus, Eliza Doolittle.

On the continent it helped to inspire a genre of vaguely pornographic literature about the sexual perversion rife in England, a fantasy that belied the fact that late Victorian London was not a nest of vice, relatively speaking. Most measure of squalor and child abuse had declined in the 19^th century and a teenage girl by the end of the century was relatively safe, compared to a predecessor in almost any era; public moral outrage offered protection, even if it could be unforgiving for those same girls who transgressed.

Stead would become the most famous journalist of the era, so renowned that in 1912 he was invited to New York by the US President to attend a conference — and so booked a ticket on a famously unsinkable new liner. He was last seen helping women and children trying to get on to lifeboats, and, true to the chapel ethos of his parents, gave away his lifejacket. He was among the 1,500 who lost their lives on the Titanic.

A century or so later, in 2003, a journalist for the Times called Andrew Norfolk became aware of strange and disturbing rumours from Yorkshire. Originally reported by Labour MP Anne Cryer, they involved groups of mostly Pakistani men loitering around schools in Rotherham and sexually abusing girls, some as young as 13. There were supposedly whole gangs of men involved and the number of victims stood in the hundreds. Norfolk found it implausible; it sounded like a far-Right conspiracy.

Yet, as the Times journalist soon began to realise, this story was true. In fact, it was much bigger than anyone could really conceive, and it wasn’t just Rotherham, either; similar things were happening across the north of England and beyond. There were thousands of girls involved.

This was far more horrifying than the scandal Stead uncovered, yet no Parliamentary law resulted from the revelation. The story was extensively covered by Norfolk, and it inspired a drama and a couple of books by those involved. Yet no great national soul searching had followed — and that is why it is most likely still going on. (Read more.)